Are You Better Than No-Amon?
8 Are you better than No-Amon, who was situated among the rivers, who had the waters around her, whose rampart was the sea, and her wall was of the sea? 9 Cush and Egypt were her boundless strength. Put and Libya were her helpers. 10 Yet was she carried away. She went into captivity. Her young children also were dashed in pieces at the head of all the streets, and they cast lots for her honorable men, and all her great men were bound in chains. 11 You also will be drunken. You will be hidden. You also will seek a stronghold because of the enemy. 12 All your fortresses will be like fig trees with the first-ripe figs. If they are shaken, they fall into the mouth of the eater. 13 Behold, your troops among you are women. The gates of your land are set wide open to your enemies. The fire has devoured your bars.
Assyria had itself destroyed an unassailable city; Nahum simply asks whether Nineveh is a better case.
The taunt argues from precedent, and its force is that Assyria supplied the precedent. No-Amon — Thebes, the Egyptian capital on the Nile — sat among the waters with the river as her rampart, and Egypt and Cush were her boundless strength. Every advantage Nineveh claimed, Thebes had held first.
Verse 10 states what happened, in terms Assyrian armies had made routine: carried into captivity, her children dashed at the head of every street, lots cast for her honored men. The atrocity described is one Assyria committed, now read back as its own future. So verse 11: you also will seek a stronghold — the same word that in Nahum 1:7 belonged to Yahweh, and the search fails because it is aimed elsewhere. Verse 12 makes the fortresses fig trees dropping ripe fruit at a shake.
settled What this mark means